When I get into the client’s office this morning I have to do a conference call to look at how well the integration of two of their systems (via a third) is going. This follows a call last Thursday and there is one already scheduled for tomorrow. The original plan was to hand this over to the unit I am setting up at the end of December to be tested. I had that plan changed in early December to one where the construction team would actually Integrate it (see article here) before handing it over for test. We also defined a set of basic integration tests we wanted the construction team to demonstrate at the time of handover. Four weeks were allowed for the integration prior to the handover.

We are just over half way through the Integration period. The score at the end of yesterday was zero of the demonstration tests attempted, one type of message and item of data successfully sent from system A to system B and no messsages yet sent from B to A. The alarm bells are ringing and hence the start of a series of frequent calls to recover things.

Why has this happend again? All of the ususal causes alluded to in the article or in the more detailed analysis given in the notes here which also explain the concepts of a more effective Integration approach. The way this exercises was likely to go was forseen and forewarned. The re-plan that gave the construction team four more weeks to get it working has helped, it has avoided disruption and waste from trying to test something that simply does not work, but we have yet to see how long it will actually take get to the point where the basic integration tests planned for the handover pass.

Lets see what this morning call brings.